Surviving Exams, Winter, and Life — All at Once

Exams are starting from the 10th of December… and today is the 6th. Three days left. Just three. And the funniest part? I am still trying to convince myself that haan, ab toh padhai start karta hoon(Kidding, pdaye start kiye hai🥲). But winter has its own plan, and my brain has its own plan, and both of them are against my exams.
These days, life feels like a mix of studying, shivering, overthinking, and surviving.
I have to study… I have to cook… I have to handle everything alone in this chilly winter. And trust me, waking up in the morning is the hardest exam of all. Before any actual exam starts, winter takes my test first.
Every morning the same story repeats. I open my eyes at the alarm and think, “Bus 30 minutes aur… bas 30.” And those 30 minutes become a negotiation with myself.
Finally, after fighting with my blanket, my cold hands, my sleepy brain, I wake up.
I get fresh, enter the kitchen, and make chai: my survival potion. I hold the cup like it’s the only warm thing left in this world. And in that moment, for 5 minutes, life feels peaceful.
Then reality hits: Exams are coming.
Studying in winter feels different. Your mind wants to work; your body wants to hibernate. You open the book, read two lines, and suddenly the blanket looks more attractive than biochemistry. But still… somehow… we push ourselves. We try again. We sit, we study, we fight sleep, we try to understand something that looks like it was written by aliens.
But you know what?
One day, I’ll forget most of the questions I wrote in these exams.
But I won’t forget these days.
I won’t forget how I survived alone.
I won’t forget how I made chai every morning just to feel alive.
I won’t forget how I cooked my meals, washed dishes, studied, and handled winter all together.
I won’t forget how I managed everything even when things felt tough.
Surviving alone teaches you more than any textbook.
It teaches patience.
It teaches responsibility.
It teaches strength.
It teaches small joys : like the warmth of chai, the comfort of a blanket, or the satisfaction of finishing one chapter.
These little things become memories.
These days become stories.
These struggles become lessons.
Sometimes I think life purposely puts us in situations where we are forced to grow.
Where the room is cold.
Where the exams are close.
Where no one is there to wake us up or cook for us.
Where we must depend on ourselves.
And in all this… somewhere quietly… we grow.
We become stronger.
We learn how to handle life.
We understand what independence really feels like...not the glamorous version but the real one, the raw one, where you study with cold fingers and cook with sleepy eyes.
Exams will come and go.
Marks will come and go.
But these days :
these small daily victories 
they will stay with me forever.
These are the chapters of life that no syllabus teaches.
These are the winters that shape us.
These are the moments that show us who we really are.
And maybe… just maybe… years later, when life becomes bigger and responsibilities become heavier, I will look back at these December days and smile.
Because I survived.
Because I learned.
Because I grew.
Because I did it on my own.